Cahners Publishing – owners of 127 magazines including Variety and Publishers Weekly – is mulling a move of its headquarters from the Boston area to Manhattan to save money.

While office rents in the Big Apple are generally higher than Boston’s, Cahners believes it can reduce costs here and also gain more prestige than in the Boston suburb of Newton, where it’s been operating for a half-century.

“We’re considering making New York – technically – our headquarters. We already have 600 people here,” its CEO Bruce Barnet told The Post.

At the same time, Cahners is handing out pink slips over the next several days to about 300 of its employees in the Boston area in a major cutback ordered by its troubled parent, London-based Reed Elsevier, one of the world’s largest publishers.

The cutback, first reported in The Post, was confirmed yesterday by London executives, who cited a 45-percent plunge in operating profits at its Cahners subsidiary here. The parent’s profits are also down 10.1 percent to $445.8 million in the first half, and are expected to be down for the rest of the year, too.

The firings – including a half-dozen key headquarters officers – represent about 7 percent of its 4,300 employees scattered over 50 offices in several states. Cahners expects to save $30 million in the layoffs, funds that will be funneled back into more web ventures and new acquisitions, said Barnet.

“We need a faster pace for the web,” he said, adding that the company has 140 websites.

Analysts questioned whether cutting jobs from the print titles was an answer.

“When you’re spending a lot of money in new media, which is driving operating profit down, and the only place you’re getting your revenue is from your print side, to start cutting jobs there raises questions,” said David Adair, a media analyst at HSBC Securities in London. “This is rolling the dice.”

Barnet said he hasn’t contacted any city officials here about tax breaks or other incentives for setting up larger operations here.

Cahners has offices in Chelsea on West 17th Street for Variety, Broadcasting & Cable and Publishers Weekly, and offices in TriBeCa on Hudson Street, where Interior Design and trendy new real estate title Grid are housed.

“I spend a lot of time in New York,” said Barnet. “It’s the center of the media and the center of the financial community. We want a bigger presence in New York. ”